Alvarez Calls Khabib’s Title Meaningless

The chaos over the lightweight title was supposed to end following UFC 223, but according to Eddie Alvarez, Khabib Nurmagomedov’s belt is “quite meaningless.”

“If the Philadelphia Eagles show up for the Super Bowl, and New England can’t make it, you don’t bring in the third-place team to play for the Lombardi Trophy,” Alvarez said to Ariel Helwani of The MMA Hour.

“You have to wait and you have be patient. You can’t tell the No. three, four, five guys ‘you get a title shot.’ It just got silly real fast. Everything got silly real fast, and it made the belt quite meaningless.”

Alvarez feels the UFC is blinded by the potential of events in Russia, that they were desperate to find a way to give Nurmagomedov the belt.

“No one said that they were just begging to give him that belt because they had Russia behind him. Russia is going to be an open market soon, and it’s convenient Khabib has the belt.”

Alvarez, who has one fight left on his current UFC contract, and “fake title” or not, he wants a crack at Khabib.

“I just need to fight somebody that I get excited about,” Alvarez said.

“I’ve been fighting since I was 19 years old, so just to say, here’s another fight and another guy, there’s got to be something in it for me, I need to be able to get excited about the guy. Wake up early, go to bed late, maybe have a little fear of losing to him, I need to feel that in order to take a fight. I feel like he could be that guy.”